S is for Safe
by scc1fan
Summary: Angsty...very angsty. Come in if you want to know more...


**Disclaimer**: I don't own these characters…and I never will…sob…

**A/N**: I kept trying to work on "Obsession", but this wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it. Enjoy! Maybe now I can get back to "Obsession"!:)

**S is for Saved**

The explosion ripped through the walls. The screams of the innocent pierced the air as the walls of concrete cascaded upon them. Then… there was silence.

David was thrown backwards from the force of the blast. He scrambled to his feet and stared at the rubble in horror. He began walking towards the dilapidated building on impulse, but it was as if he were in a dream. A fine white dust covered the sidewalk and hung in the air. It was so still, almost as if he were the only person left on the face of the earth.

He snapped back to reality as a woman came running toward him. She was bleeding and stumbled as she neared where he stood. On impulse, he grabbed her and led her out into the open. A paramedic came and took her to an open ambulance. Ambulance? When had they gotten there? Turning, David watched as firefighters and medic teams ran toward the building and became engulfed in the smoke and haze.

Someone was coming out. A familiar form. Suddenly, David's senses came rushing back at him, full force. He could hear the yells of the firefighters and the moans of the injured. The smell of fire and dust invaded his nose and he began to cough. He could recognize the figure now. It was Megan. He ran to her, helping her walk and supporting her weight. She was bleeding from a cut on her head, and had ash and soot covering her. And she was saying something.

"They're still in there!" she gasped, struggling to get a breath. "Don and Colby are still in there!" She stopped again and began coughing violently. Hands appeared out of nowhere and began pulling her away from David. He clutched at her, frantically trying to cling to the one thing that seemed to be holding all the pieces together. She said one more thing before being whisked away. But the two words were all David needed to pull himself together.

"Find them."

David stumbled as the paramedics separated him from Megan and turned again for the building. There was so much going on, no one seemed to notice a black man in a suit running into the building instead of out. Once inside, David stopped for his eyes to become adjusted to the darkness. Except for the occasional spark from an electrical wire, the only light came from outside, and not a lot was getting through the smoky haze.

He began walking around the room, and bent over the first person he saw. It was a man, and he was dead. But it wasn't Colby or Don. David felt sick at himself for the overwhelming relief that flooded his body at that realization. He shook it off and began making his was through the room, being careful not to get in the way of the medics that were helping the wounded. He would only take a second to make sure the figure under their hands and instruments wasn't either his partner or his boss, and then he moved on.

He forced himself to be detached from the chaos around him as he searched. He had a mission to complete. Let the medics do their job and he would do his.

He had cleared three rooms and headed for the fourth. There weren't any medics here yet. "They must be working their way back," he thought to himself. He heard a cough come from the far side of the room. He tried to ignore it, as he had all the others, but he couldn't ignore the weak cry of help. He couldn't ignore it because it was a voice he heard every day.

David rushed to the far side of the room in an effort to reach his fallen comrade. When Colby's face came into view, he started. Colby was pale and shaking slightly – a far cry from the vibrant young agent who had walked into the building a short forty minutes past. His partner's eyes were shut, and his breathing seemed somewhat irregular. With trembling hands, David pulled his jacket off and laid it across the prone agent. Colby's eyes fluttered open and focused on his face. "Hey," David said quietly.

"Hey, " Colby responded weakly.

David winced. Colby wasn't supposed to be weak. He was supposed to be excitable, tough, and obnoxious. He swallowed hard and forced the words out of his mouth. "I need you to tell me where it hurts."

Colby nodded and shut his eyes to block out the pain. And there was so much pain… He slowly breathed out and said through clenched teeth, "My leg. It's bad, I can tell. I'm pretty sure it's the worst out of everything. Then my ribs, then my head." He quit talking, exhausted by the effort.

David nodded as Colby listed his injuries in order from the most serious to least. The head didn't look too bad. There seemed to just be a cut above his left eye. The seriousness of injury to his ribs was more difficult to determine. Since his breathing seemed off, it was quite possible that Colby had broken ribs that had punctured a lung. David knew that a victim with a punctured lung should be kept as still as possible. But there was still one more injury to his partner, probably the injury that was the cause of most of his pain and his steadily waning strength.

David gulped as he turned his gaze on the offending leg. A large piece of concrete had fallen on Colby's left leg, and was pinning him to the ground. He could only see parts of Colby's leg, but he could tell it was severely injured. Colby didn't miss the look on David's face when he saw the damage.

"That bad, huh?" he wheezed.

David turned back to Colby and attempted a smile. "Nah, it's going to be fine. We'll have you out of here in no time."

A sudden thought struck Colby and he grabbed at David's arm "Where're Don and Megan?" he asked frantically.

David put a restraining on the younger agent's arm to keep him from moving. "Megan's okay. She got a little banged up, but she's okay."

Colby may have been in extreme pain, but he didn't miss the omission on David's part. "And Don?" he countered.

David sighed heavily. "We haven't found him yet, but we will, don't worry. We just gotta get you out of here first." David stood. He needed to get one of those medics.

This time it was Colby who stopped the other agent. "You gotta find Don, David," he insisted. David opened his mouth to respond, but Colby cut him off. "He was right in front of me. He has to be in this room or the next!"

"I'm not leaving you to go look for Don, man!" David responded.

"Look David – I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I was in the Army, man! I can tell I'm not going to die in the next ten minutes. Go find Don and get him help. He was closer to the blast than I was and is likely hurt worse. Go find him and get him out and then you can come back for me."

David was torn. Should he leave one man to look for another? But Colby didn't give him a chance to argue. "Go," he commanded quietly.

David got up and moved towards the next doorway. He turned and gave a thumbs-up sign. "I'll be back. That's a promise."

Colby nodded and watched as his partner disappeared around the corner. "Hurry," he begged quietly, as he rested his head against a piece of concrete and began his wait.

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David felt like a heel, leaving Colby behind. However, he also knew that any time spent arguing with Colby would have been wasted time. He would have lost the argument anyway. Colby was the best at winning arguments. He could reason things out and get people to come around to his point of view quicker than just about anyone that David knew. That skill gave his partner an incredible edge when questioning witnesses or interrogating a suspect.

He shook his head. Time to concentrate on the present mission. Finding Don and getting both him and Colby out of this place was the only thing to be thinking about. He slowly made his way through the rubble that had once been the side dining room. It didn't look much like the chic lunch place the whole team enjoyed eating at after closing a case. A thought came to mind. Where would they eat to celebrate now?

David tried to swallow the sick feeling in his stomach that came from that thought. Would they ever be a whole team again? Could anyone in this room really have survived? He pushed the thought to the back of his mind and resumed his search. He was going to find Don…one way or the other.

Sounds from Colby's room stopped his search momentarily and sent him to the doorway. Or what was left of the doorway. Three firemen were lifting the cement block off of Colby's leg while a paramedic was hooking up an IV. David caught Colby's eye and put a finger up to his lips. Colby's eye flickered with understanding, and he gave a slight nod. It wouldn't do to have anyone find David back there. They would surely make him leave. After Colby was loaded on a stretcher and gone, David turned again to the piles of wreckage. One down, one to go.

"What are you doing?"

David's hand instinctively went for his sidearm while he whirled around. A young firefighter stood about ten feet from him.

"I'm looking for my boss. He was in here…and I…I need to find him."

David hated seeing the look of obvious pity on the young man's face. He turned from the stare and kicked aside a piece of wood.

The other man moved a little closer. "Look man," he started. "No one could have survived if they were in here when it happened." He took a couple more steps. "Let's get out of here, okay?"

But David wasn't listening. He was staring at a piece of fabric and begging his eyes not to be playing tricks on him. Quickly, he dropped to his knees and began pulling wood and pieces of metal off of the form of Special Agent Don Eppes.

The young rescue worker felt his heart wrench as the other man disregarded his pleas to leave and began digging in the rubble once more. He turned to leave. He'd need help to get him out safely. But a declaration from David stopped him in his tracks.

"It's him! And he's alive!"

The next few minutes were a blur as rescue workers, paramedics, and firefighters poured into the room and worked together to help the injured agent. With the help of power tools and many hands, Don was soon released from his prison and on his way outside. David trailed behind the stretcher, blinking as he walked into the sunlight. Don was being loaded into an ambulance, and Colby was nowhere in sight. David sighed, suddenly exhausted to his very core.

"You found them," said a voice behind him. Turning, he saw Megan. She looked tired, and was sporting a large, white bandage on her head. "You did good," she said, slipping an arm across his shoulder and gently leading him towards the parking lot.

David turned slightly and looked at the shell of a building that stood before him. There would be an investigation, of course, but David didn't want to think about that right now. That building could have been a grave for all four of them. But it wasn't. They were all alive. A little worse for the wear maybe, but alive. They were safe.

**THE END**

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**So...what do you think? Horrible...okay...whatever. :) Please read and review--it's good for my self esteem. **

**Kas**


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